Making good choices

I got to put my Libertarian leaning mind on display in a live setting for the first time in quite a while last night. It was a lot of fun, for a number of reasons. First of all, I was not the only person in the room with essentially Libertarian ideals. Secondly, a number of people in the room had clearly never been in a deep discussion with someone of Libertarian ideals, or at the very least not with someone who had really thought through those ideals and could hold their own in a discussion. And finally, the group consisted of people who for the most part had pre-existing relationships and a foundation of respect, so it was a good, open, healthy exchange of ideas, devoid of personal attacks and the like. Sadly, those are rare these days.

It was a great experience for me, because it really gave me an opportunity to put my beliefs out there and see how they stood up to scrutiny, an opportunity I don't often get. I was very much sharpened in my views, and I think I also really got to the core of why I lean Libertarian. The topic of the evening was the poor, and the government's role in helping the poor. Obviously, I believe that role should be very limited/non-existant. As we went back and forth about this for a while, I finally came back to this truth. Clearly, a lot of people have been legitimately helped by government social programs. That is obviously a good thing. But a greater "evil" has come along with that. We've begun a movement towards shielding people from the consequences of poor choices. (To be absolutley clear, I'm not saying that everyone who is poor in this country is that way because they made poor choices, stuff happens.) And when you take away the negative consequences of bad choices, it becomes much more difficult for people to learn to make good choices. We've created a culture where it can be more attractive for people to stay unemployed rather than work cetain jobs. That's the fallacy of government programs that give without any expectation. Could we reform the government programs to have that level of expectation? Probably, but in my opinion, if you do that, all you do is turn the government into a lumbering, expensive middleman. Not my idea of a good time.